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	], hangs in the ]. It is generally assumed to be a depiction of ], but this identification is not universally accepted.]]		], hangs in the ]. It is generally assumed to be a depiction of ], but this identification is not universally accepted.]]
	Around one hundred and fifty years after ]'s death in ], doubts began to be expressed by some about the authorship of the plays and poetry attributed to him. The term '''Shakespearean authorship''' normally refers to the ] propounded by these doubters; it should be distinguished from the less contentious academic debates about what exactly Shakespeare wrote in the collaborative world of the Elizabethan theatre.		Around one hundred and fifty years after ]'s death in ], doubts began to be expressed by some about the authorship of the plays and poetry attributed to him. The term '''Shakespearean authorship''' normally refers to the ] propounded by these doubters; it should be distinguished from the less contentious academic debates about what exactly Shakespeare wrote in the collaborative world of the Elizabethan theatre.

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This portrait, called the Chandos portrait, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. It is generally assumed to be a depiction of William Shakespeare, but this identification is not universally accepted.

Around one hundred and fifty years after William Shakespeare's death in 1616, doubts began to be expressed by some about the authorship of the plays and poetry attributed to him. The term Shakespearean authorship normally refers to the conspiracy theory propounded by these doubters; it should be distinguished from the less contentious academic debates about what exactly Shakespeare wrote in the collaborative world of the Elizabethan theatre.

Overview

In the 19th century the most popular alternative candidate was Sir Francis Bacon. Many 19th century doubters, however, declared themselves agnostics and refused to endorse an alternative. The American populist poet Walt Whitman gave voice to this skepticism when he told Horace Traubel, "I go with you fellows when you say no to Shaksper : that's about as far as I have got. As to Bacon, well, we'll see, we'll see."

Since the 1980s, the most popular candidate has been Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. His case was put forward by John Thomas Looney in 1920, and Charlton Ogburn in 1984. The poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe has also been a popular candidate. Many other candidates have been suggested but have failed to gather large followings.

The belief of conventional scholarship remains that William Shakespeare, the man recorded as living in Stratford-upon-Avon and under whose name numerous plays and poems were published, is the same man who actually wrote the plays. Professional scholars of Elizabethan history and literature largely scorn or ignore the question.

Terminology

Stratfordians and anti-Stratfordians

Those who question whether William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the author of Shakespeare's plays call themselves anti-Stratfordians. They call those who have no such doubts Stratfordians. "Stratfordians" themselves view the question of authorship as settled, and thus do not use a name for themselves.

Terms for adherents to specific candidates

Those anti-Stratfordians who identify Francis Bacon, The Earl of Oxford, or Christopher Marlowe as the author of Shakespeare's plays are commonly referred to as Baconians, Oxfordians, and Marlovians, respectively.

Shaksper vs. Shakespeare

There was no standardised spelling in Elizabethan England and Shakespeare's name was spelled in many different ways throughout his lifetime. Anti-Stratfordians conventionally refer to the man from Stratford as "Shaksper" or "Shakespere" to distinguish him from the author of the plays and poems (whomever he may really have been), whom they refer to as "Shakespeare". This distinction has been criticised for implicitly suggesting that the names of the Stratford man and the playwright were always spelled differently, when in fact they were not . This article thus uses the spelling 'Shakespeare' throughout.

Common arguments

The conventional view is that Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. He then moved to London and became a poet, a playwright, an actor, part-owner of the Globe Theatre in London and a member of the favoured acting company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men). He divided his time between London and Stratford, and retired there in 1613 before his death in 1616.

Shakespeare's life

Anti-Stratfordians frequently state that we know little of Shakespeare's life, though mainstream scholars respond that we know more about him than we do about any other dramatist of the period (other than Ben Jonson).

Shakespeare's reputation

Some anti-Stratfordians suggest that Shakespeare was rarely described as a poet or playwright in his lifetime. However, he was referred to specifically by name as a well-known writer at least twenty-three times, and his name also appears on the title pages of fourteen of the fifteen works published during his lifetime. It is also known that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was an actor and shareholder in the King's Men at London's Globe Theatre where the plays were produced. In 1623, after the death of all proposed candidates, the plays were collected for publication in the First Folio edition, and the prefatory material refers to Stratford-upon-Avon as the home of the author. No contemporary document connects any other person with the plays.

Shakespeare's education

Shakespeare's signature, from his will, speaks against the theory that the William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was completely illiterate.

Shakespeare's literacy

Anti-Stratfordians describe William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon as an uneducated or poorly educated bumpkin. They point out that Shakespeare's father, wife and at least one of his two daughters appear to have been illiterate beyond signing their own names, and thus, they claim, the literacy of Shakespeare himself is in doubt . They therefore assert that the author of the Shakespeare canon must have been a man of better education.

Orthodox scholars respond that Shakespeare's literacy is not in doubt. It is known from information about land he owned that the Stratford Shakespeare became a rich man. While anti-Stratfordians claim he amassed this wealth from his trading career, a successful trader at that time would likely need to be able at least to read and write, though not, of course, to compose poetry and plays.

There are several signatures from this time almost universally accepted as valid. Anti-Stratfordians point out that the surviving signatures of Shakespeare show that he spelled his name in several different ways. However, there was no standardised orthography at the time (for example, early editions of the works of the university-educated Christopher Marlowe spell his name as Marlowe, Marlo, Marlow, Marklin, and Marley).

Anti-Stratfordians often point to the shakiness of Shakespeare's signatures, suggesting that they are the work of a man unaccustomed to holding a pen. However, the images we normally see of the signatures are enlarged reproductions and conceal the fact that most are tiny, and written across small folded pieces of rough paper designed to seal a document; they would be difficult for anyone to write smoothly on. Furthermore most of the signatures date from the year preceding Shakespeare's death, when he may well have been seriously ill, having not written a play for three years. Finally, they are written in secretary hand, a style different from the italic hand used in modern writing.

Formal education

Mainstream scholars assume that Shakespeare was a student at the Stratford Free School, since he would have been entitled to attend it, and since textbooks used at the Stratford Free School are alluded to in the plays. Anti-Stratfordians point out that there are no records that William Shakespeare of Stratford ever attended school. Mainstream scholars respond that this is because there are no records of the school at all for the relevant period, of Shakespeare or anyone else.

What is universally accepted is that Shakespeare had no association with a university. However, an Elizabethan era university education is fundamentally quite different from modern university educations. Whereas modern universities offer many varied courses and are attended, in the west, by a large minority of the population, the universities of the sixteenth century were operated exclusively for the purposes of training an individual for a career in either the priesthood or law. Virtually all of Shakespeare's contemporaries who wrote for the stage lacked degrees.

Shakespeare's will

Some anti-Stratfordians bring up William Shakespeare's will. It is long and explicit, listing the possessions of a successful bourgeois in detail, but is remarkable for containing no mention at all of personal papers, manuscripts, or books (books were rare and expensive items at the time).

However, manuscripts of plays were usually owned by the theatre company. Shakespeare was only one shareholder. And books were not normally listed separately in wills at this time; despite their value, they were included among the house-contents. Known wills of other authors of the time often do not mention books either.

It is also important to note that Shakespeare's will specifies that sums of money are left to purchase rings of friendship for Richard Burbage, John Heminge and Henry Condell - all three members of the Chamberlain's/King's Men. Heminge and Condell later compiled the First Folio of 1623.

Shakespeare's class

Anti-Stratfordians argue that a provincial glovemaker's son could never have written plays that deal with the activities of the nobility, which most of Shakespeare's plays do. Orthodox scholars respond that the glamorous world of the aristocracy was a popular setting for most plays in this period. They add that numerous English Renaissance playwrights, including Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, Ben Jonson, Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker and others wrote about the nobility despite their own humble origins.

Anti-Stratfordians often argue that the plays show a detailed understanding of courtly life that would have been impossible to attain without an aristocratic upbringing. Orthodox scholars respond that Shakespeare was an upwardly mobile man: like many playwrights, he was patronised by an aristocrat, the Earl of Southampton, and his company regularly performed at court; he thus had ample opportunity to observe courtly life. In addition, his theatrical career made him wealthy and he eventually acquired a coat of arms for his family and the title of gentleman, like many other wealthy middle class men in this period.

At the same time, the plays (notably A Midsummer Night's Dream) contain details of lower-class life in which aristocrats would have little knowledge or interest. Many of Shakespeare's most vivid characters are lower class or associate with this milieu: Falstaff, Nick Bottom, Autolycus, Sir Toby Belch etc.

It should also be noted that in the seventeenth century, Shakespeare was not thought of as an expert on the court, but as a rustic 'child of nature' who "Warble his native wood-notes wild" as John Milton put it in his poem l'Allegro. Indeed, John Dryden wrote in 1668 that the playwrights Beaumont and Fletcher "understood and imitated the conversation of Gentlemen much better" than Shakespeare, and in 1673 wrote of Elizabethan playwrights in general that "I cannot find that any of them had been conversant in courts, except Ben Jonson." His contemporary Robert Greene derided Shakespeare as an "upstart" and a "factotum", words that Stratfordians argue seem implausible to be directed towards a powerful aristocrat.

Evidence in the poems

Both orthodox scholars and anti-Stratfordians have used Shakespeare's sonnets as evidence for their positions.

Orthodox scholars assert that the opening lines of Sonnet 135 are strong evidence against any alternate author, or at least any not named William:

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,

And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;

More than enough am I that vex thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus. (the italics and capitalisation are those of the original text)

The italicised puns on Shakespeare's name continue in Sonnet 136 which concludes "And then thou lovest me, for my name is Will".

While Oxfordians contend that a nobleman would not have wanted to be known as a playwright, orthodox scholars point out that this argument does not apply to poetry, which was a skill expected of an Elizabethan courtier. Poems such as Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece or Venus and Adonis, long narrative works on classical subjects, were a prestigious and respectable form of composition, unlike 'merely popular' plays. Oxfordians respond that the contents of the Sonnets, as well as the narrative poems, touched on matters of political scandal which positively required the adoption of a nom de plume by the author. They cite Sonnet 76 as clear evidence of the author's confession of the need for such a ruse:

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?

Orthodox scholars find it significant that both of Shakespeare's major poetic works, the narrative poems and the sonnets, were published immediately after periods in which the theatres had been closed by an outbreak of plague. This pattern, it is suggested, is more consistent with composition by a professional dramatist looking for an alternate source of income than a rich dilettante composing coincidentally during a theatre closing.

Cryptograms

Ignatius Donelly, a US congressman, science fiction author and Atlantis theorist, wrote The Great Cryptogram (1888), in which he found encoded messages in the plays attributing authorship to Francis Bacon — encoded messages that Donelly alone could discern, however.

The 19th century authorial debate placed great emphasis on discerning authorial cryptograms in Shakespeare's works. Elizabeth Wells Gallup examined Bacon's "bi-lateral cipher" (in which two typefaces were used as a method of encoding) and announced that Bacon was not only the author of the Shakespearean works but also the eldest child of Queen Elizabeth, the product of a secret marriage. However, only Ms. Gallup could reliably distinguish between the "two" fonts.

In 1957, William F. Friedman, considered by many to be the greatest cryptologist of all time, and his wife Elizebeth, also a cryptologist noted for her US Government work on "rum runners" ciphers published a refutation of the cryptogram theories, in particular the Baconian theories. They argued that the messages claimed to have been encrypted in the texts by one (or both) of the authors were entirely implausible cryptographically and in some cases impossible. Using the same methods, Friedman and several others produced cryptograms showing that Dante Alighieri, Shakespeare himself and Babe Ruth wrote the plays. They then went on to use statistical methods to demonstrate how different Shakespeare's and Bacon's styles of writing were.

A common example of a word which looks like an encrypted message of some kind is the word honorificabilitudinitatibus, used in Love's Labour's Lost. Its significance is that it can, among many other anagrams, be rearranged into "HI LUDI F. BACONIS NATI TUITI ORBIS", translated by Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence as "These plays, F. Bacon's offpring, are preserved for the world". Unfortunately for those seeing more than an unusual word, it had been used (though rarely) by other writers before Shakespeare. Honorificabilitudo appears in a Latin charter of 1187, and occurs as honorificabilitudinitas in 1300. Dante cites honorificabilitudinitate as a typical example of a long word in De Vulgari Eloquentia II. vii. Thomas Nashe used the word in 1599 (cited by the Oxford English Dictionary; see honorificabilitudinitatibus). It also occurs in The Complaynt of Scotland, and in John Marston's play The Dutch Courtesan (1605).

A Shakespeare-related cryptogram is supposedly present in Psalm 46 of the King James Bible. The 46th word from the beginning of the psalm is "shake"; the 47th word from the end of the psalm, counting backwards, is "spear" (if one omits the final word of the Psalm, this is the 46th word counting backwards). In contrast, in the Bishops' Bible (published in 1568, when Shakespeare was four years old) '"shake" is 47 words from the beginning and "spear" 48 from the end. In the Geneva Bible (1560), the numbers are 47 and 45. In Miles Coverdale's translation of the psalm, which appeared in the Book of Common Prayer of the 1540s, the numbers are 46 and 48. This is supposed by some to be cryptographic evidence that Shakespeare had a hand in writing the King James Bible. It has also been claimed that similar hidden cryptograms, supporting both Shakespeare's and Marlowe's authorship, can be found in the Sonnets.

Critics of this method have asked what objective a cryptogram would serve in a literary work. If the author wished to keep his identity secret, why encode his identity into the text? Alternatively, if he wished his authorship to be known generally, why not publish it openly? Codes are used by people who wish to pass an item of information solely to someone who is known to understand the code. In the case of supposed Shakespeare cryptograms, however, the author has no control over who will decipher the code, so the motive for coding seems illogical.

Geographical knowledge

Some anti-Stratfordians believe that the plays must have been written by a well-travelled man, as many of them are set in European countries. Orthodox scholars respond that numerous plays of this period by other playwrights are set in foreign locations and Shakespeare is thus entirely conventional in this regard. In addition, in many cases Shakespeare did not invent the setting, but borrowed it from the source he was using for the plot.

Even outside of the authorship question, there has been debate about the extent of geographical knowledge displayed by Shakespeare. Some scholars argue that there is very little topographical information in the texts (nowhere in Othello or the Merchant of Venice are Venetian canals mentioned). Indeed, there are apparent mistakes: for example, Shakespeare refers to Bohemia as having a coastline in The Winter's Tale (the country is landlocked) and in All's Well That Ends Well he suggests that a journey from Paris to Northern Spain would pass through Italy.

Answers to these objections have been made by other scholars (both orthodox and anti-Stratfordian). It has been noted that The Merchant of Venice demonstrates some knowledge of the city: it uses the local word, traghetto, for the Venetian mode of transport (printed as 'traject' in the published texts; see John Russell Brown, ed. The Merchant of Venice, Arden Edition, 1961, note to Act 3, Sc.4, p.96). One explanation for Bohemia having a coastline is the author's awareness that the kingdom of Bohemia at one time stretched to the Adriatic (see J.H. Pafford, ed. The Winter's Tale, Arden Edition, 1962, p. 66). Oxfordians find it significant that the Earl of Oxford was travelling in the Adriatic region during the brief span of time in which Bohemia did in fact have a coastline.

Anti-Stratfordians assume that the above information could only be obtained from first-hand experience of the regions under discussion; they thus argue that the author of the plays must have been a diplomat, aristocrat or politician. Orthodox scholars believe that this information could easily have been picked up in London from books or from conversations.

Other evidence

There are no comments about veiled authorship in Ben Jonson's private diaries of the time, nor in any of the known gossip reports of the time or the succeeding few decades (e.g. Aubrey's Lives or Pepys's Diary). Argument from absence is tricky and rarely compelling at best, but in this case certainly is supportive of the Stratfordian position.

Candidates and their champions

See List of people theorized to have written Shakespeare

As early as the 18th century, unorthodox views of Shakespeare were expressed in two allegorical stories. In The Life and Adventures of Common Sense (1769) by Herbert Lawrence, Shakespeare is portrayed as a "shifty theatrical character ... and incorrigible thief" (Michell). In The Story of the Learned Pig (1786) by an anonymous author described as "an officer of the Royal Navy," Shakespeare is merely a front for the real author, a chap called "Pimping Billy."

Around this time, James Wilmot, a Warwickshire clergyman and scholar, was researching a biography on Shakespeare. He travelled extensively around Stratford, visiting the libraries of country houses within a radius of fifty miles looking for records or correspondence connected with Shakespeare or books that had been owned by him. By 1781, Wilmot had become so appalled at the lack of evidence for Shakespeare that he concluded he could not be the author of the works. Wilmot was familiar with the writings of Francis Bacon and formed the opinion that he was more likely the real author of the Shakespearean canon. He confided this to one James Cowell. Cowell disclosed it in a paper read to the Ipswich Philosophical Society in 1805 (Cowell's paper was only rediscovered in 1932).

These stories were soon forgotten. However, Bacon would emerge again as a candidate in the nineteenth century when, at the height of bardolatry, the "authorship question" was popularised.

Sir Francis Bacon

In 1856, William Henry Smith put forth the claim that the author of Shakespeare's plays was Sir Francis Bacon, a major scientist, a courtier, a diplomat, an essayist, a historian and a successful politician, who served as Solicitor General (1607), Attorney General (1613) and Lord Chancellor (1618).

Smith was supported by Delia Bacon in her book The Philosophy of Shakespeare's Plays (1857), in which she maintains that Shakespeare was in fact a group of writers, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, for the purpose of inculcating a philosophic system, for which they felt that they themselves could not afford to assume the responsibility. She professed to discover this system beneath the superficial text of the plays.

Bacon was particularly favoured as a candidate by advocates of cryptogram theories. As an example, some anti-Stratfordians have suggested that honorificabilitudinitatibus (see above) is actually an anagram for the Latin phrase hi ludi, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi (These plays, born of F. Bacon, are preserved for the world).

Supporters of Bacon also draw attention to similarities between the language of the plays and the sayings collected by Bacon in his notebook, the "Promus". Another link is the Northumberland Manuscript, a document that has both their names written together many times over on the same page.

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

Main article: Oxfordian theory

The most popular latter-day candidate is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. First proposed by J. Thomas Looney in 1920, Oxford is today the alternative candidate the majority of anti-Stratfordians have settled upon. Advocates of Oxford are usually referred to as Oxfordians.

Looney's 1920 work, Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford persuaded Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles, Marjorie Bowen, and many other early 20th-century intellectuals of the case for Oxford's authorship . Oxford rapidly became the favored alternative to the orthodox view of authorship.

In 1984, Charlton Ogburn Jr.'s The Mysterious William Shakespeare not only renewed the case for Oxford's authorship with an abundance of new research but also engaged in a trenchant critique of the standards and methods used by the orthodox school. In his Shakespeare Quarterly review of Ogburn's book, Richmond Crinkley, then the Director of Educational Programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library, acknowledged the appeal of approaches such as Ogburn's: "Doubts about Shakespeare came early and grew rapidly. They have a simple and direct plausibility", and that the dismissive approach of conventional scholarship encouraged such doubts: "The plausibility has been reinforced by the tone and methods by which traditional scholarship has responded to the doubts" (36: 518).

Oxfordians argue that there are striking similarities between his biography and events in Shakespeare's plays. He was, for example, the son-in-law of Lord Burghley, who is regarded by some as the model for Polonius. His own daughter was engaged to Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, at about the time that most believe the first sonnets were written. The early sonnets encourage a young nobleman to marry, and Wriothesley has long been regarded as one of two candidates to be the young man in question. The acclaim of his contemporaries regarding his talent as a poet and a playwright, his closeness to Queen Elizabeth I and Court life, underlined passages in that correspond to quotations in Shakespeare's plays, and striking similarities of phraseology and thought between the plays and his letters (Fowler 1986) are cited among the critical elements of evidence supporting Oxford's authorship.

Supporters of the standard view would dispute most if not all of these contentions. For them, the most compelling evidence against Oxford is that he died in 1604, whereas about eleven plays by Shakespeare appear to have been written after that date, with the last being written in 1613. Oxfordians argue that orthodox scholars have misdated these plays, and suggest alternative chronologies that fit their candidate.

Many mainstream scholars also consider Oxford's published poems to be inept and to bear no stylistic resemblance to the works of Shakespeare.

Christopher Marlowe

The gifted playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe is considered by some to be the most highly qualified to write the works of Shakespeare, even though he was apparently dead. According to history, Marlowe was killed in 1593 by a group of men including Ingram Frizer, a servant of Lord Walsingham, Marlowe's patron. A theory has developed that Marlowe, who may have been facing an impending death penalty for heresy, was saved by the faking of his death, and that he subsequently wrote the works of Shakespeare.

A case for Marlowe was made as early as 1895, and theories were put forward throughout the early twentieth century, for example by Archie Webster . However, the creator of the most detailed theory of Marlowe's authorship was Calvin Hoffman, an American journalist whose book on the subject, The Murder of the Man who was Shakespeare, was published in 1955. In 2001 the documentary Much Ado About Something by Michael Rubbo explored in detail the possibility of Marlowe's authorship.

Marlovian theory argues that Marlowe's apparent 'patron' Thomas Walsingham, cousin of Francis Walsingham (who directed the spy network), had Marlowe's death faked to protect him from charges of atheism and heresy being investigated by the Privy Council. (It is argued that the dedication by Shakespeare of his work to a Mr. W. H. referred to Walsingham, whose name was spelt Walsing Ham). Marlowe was then smuggled out of the country and wrote "Shakespeare's" plays and other work. Supporters of the Marlowe theory find it compelling that Shakespeare's public career as an author seems to have begun very shortly after Marlowe's supposed death. Marlowe is reported to have been interrogated by the Privy Council on May 20th, 1593, on suspicion of heresy, released pending further investigation, and to have died ten days later on 30th May. Shakespeare's first published work, Venus and Adonis, was licensed for publication on April 4, 1593 (the date at which it was issued to the public is not recorded). The first edition carried a dedication to the Earl of Southampton, signed by "William Shakespeare." The first record of Shakespeare as an actor comes from December 1594.

Supporters of Marlovian theory also point to stylometric tests (based on computer studies linking the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare to a common author and vocabulary, first undertaken by Mendenhall and more exhaustively, by Ule and Baker (see Louis Ule's biography, Christopher Marlowe, 1564-1607 (1995)), which seem to prove how "both" authors used the same vocabulary, reached for it at the same "rate" or "pace", and selected words that averaged 4.2 letters each . In addition, numerous similarities of phrasing in the works of the two authors have been compiled.

Orthodox scholars respond that these similarities are not compelling evidence given Marlowe's fame and popularity during Shakespeare's youth, and maintain that Marlowe's work is stylistically and intellectually quite different from Shakespeare's. Marlowe's half-dozen plays show little trace of Shakespeare's ability to create complex characters, his skill with prose or non-iambic verse, or his gift for comedy. Marlovians respond that these plays may well be experiments in a new writing style by a daring writer. Given Marlowe's controversial style and subject matter, differences might be expected from a writer who was seeking to stay away from the scrutiny of authorities. Stratfordians respond that such sudden and radical changes in style have not been observed in other writers of the period.

It has also been argued that embedded references to Marlowe may be found in Shakespeare's Sonnets that claim his authorship .

The assumption that there is no documentary evidence for Marlowe's faked death and survival post-1593 has been cast in doubt by diplomatic references to a man named "Christopher Marlor" arrested in Valladolid, Spain, in 1599 and 1602; also, in 1604, a Christopher Marlowe under the alias of "John Mathew" was briefly detained in the Gatehouse prison, but soon freed and his bills were paid for by spymaster Robert Cecil. Some Marlowe theorists consider this evidence that Marlowe faked his death . The orthodox position is that Marlowe (which is indistinguishable from variants like Marley and Marlor) was a common name.

Sir Henry Neville

The most recent candidate is Sir Henry Neville, a contemporary Elizabethan English diplomat who was a distant relative of Shakespeare. In The Truth Will Out, published in 2005, authors Brenda James, a part-time lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, and Professor William Rubinstein, Professor of History at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, argue that Neville's career placed him in the locations of many of the plays about the time they were written and that his life contains parallels with the events in the plays.

In particular, James and Rubinstein argue that the history plays do not promote the ruling Tudor dynasty, as is commonly stated, but instead covertly support the Plantagenet cause; Neville, as a descendant of the Plantagenet dynasty, could not be known as the author. They also claim that newly-discovered documents written by Neville while in the Tower of London contain detailed notes which later ended up in Henry VIII. Neville could have arranged for his distant relative Shakespeare to act as front man.

Others

Other candidates proposed include William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby; Sir Edward Dyer; or Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland (sometimes with his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Philip Sidney, and her aunt Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, as co-authors); and at least fifty others, including Queen Elizabeth (based on a supposed resemblance between a portrait of the Queen and the engraving of Shakespeare that appears in the First Folio). Malcolm X argued that Shakespeare was actually King James I.

Academic authorship debates

Main articles: Shakespeare's collaborations, Shakespeare Apocrypha.

The question of whether Shakespeare's canon was written by someone else is generally dismissed in mainstream scholarship. However other questions relating to the authorship of some plays are subject to debate among professional scholars of literature. These include the question of whether some of Shakespeare's plays are collaborations with another dramatist (see Shakespeare's collaborations) and whether some plays outside the traditional canon may in fact have been written by Shakespeare (see Shakespeare Apocrypha).

Notes

External links

Oxford

The Shakespeare Fellowship current research on the Oxfordian theory
Shakespeare Oxford Society
Michael J. Farrand, "The Man Who Wrote Shakespeare", a narrative poem making the case for Oxford.
The Case for Oxford in the Atlantic Monthly, 1991 (subscription required).
Alan H. Nelson's Shakespeare Authorship Pages - created by a biographer of Oxford who does not believe he wrote Shakespeare
The Shakespeare Mystery (Website for a PBS documentary; includes several articles)
Joseph Sobran, The Shakespeare Library (collection of Joseph Sobran's Oxfordian columns. Sobran's Alias Shakespeare is mentioned here, also.)
The Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference A yearly academic conference at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon on Oxfordian theory

Other candidates

I. Gililov, The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix (original Russian text)
HenryNeville.com - Website for a book on Sir Henry Neville's authorship
The URL of Derby (promotes the Earl of Derby)
Terry Ross, "The Droeshout Engraving of Shakespeare: Why It's NOT Queen Elizabeth"

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